Volume Two - The Era of Optimism, Investment & Development - The demise of H.M.S. Exmouth at Penarth Dock - 1905 . . .

Another possibility is Herr Deippe, (born 1834) a merchant seaman from the Schleswig-Holstein area of northern Germany, who opened a seaman's boarding house in Maughan Terrace, also operated a breakers yard on the banks of the River Ely. [367] The precise location of this breakers yard is not known but there is reference to him bringing the vessel 'Ellena Reed' onto the beach to be broken up in April 1907. Maybe they used the 'dock beach' adjacent to the Marine Hotel and Customs House for the purpose.

(Incidentally, there is an excellent museum at Schleswig-Holstein, the Gottorf Schloss. The almost intact remains of a Viking ship and the preserved bodies of numerous Viking warriors are impressive. The Vikings dragged their boats overland or through a tidal stream from the Baltic Sea and into to the North Sea rather than sail the treacherous waters of the Skagerrak. Some got stuck in the mud on their way to the Bristol Channel and beyond it seems!)

Carrying on the theme of the Exmouth as a training ship, another magazine came into the possession of my Penarth Dock Collection. This is an earlier edition of the Strand Magazine, probably from the late 1890's (between the first publication of the Strand Magazine in 1893 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901), complete with photographs of boys undergoing their training on the Exmouth. It provides an excellent insight into the everyday lives of many boys and young men who had perhaps fallen upon hard times or been very silly, naughty boys; and got caught in the act! I felt it was worthy of replication in its entirety.